Police in riot gear clashed with anti-austerity protestors marching Thursday against a meeting of the European Central Bank in the southern Italian city of Naples.
One protestor was arrested trying to scale a wall around the Capodimonte, the the 18th-century Bourbon palace where the governing council of the ECB, led by President Mario Draghi, was meeting.
Organisers had said the march would be peaceful, but flares were set off and bottles were thrown at retail banks along the streets as police responded with water cannons.
Protestors said they feared more demands for austerity that Italy, in its third recession in six years, cannot afford.
"You shouldn't be afraid of us, but of Draghi and those up in Capodimonte," said protest leader Alfonso De Vita.
On Viale Colli Aminei, which leads to the Capodimonte palace, businesses closed shop for the day and residents applauded the protesters, who used loudspeakers to encourage others to join them in demanding help "for those without homes and without money to make it to the end of the month".
Organizers said 4,000 protesters took to the streets, some masked and throwing firecrackers and smoke bombs at the Juvenile Court building.
The ECB governing council, which meets twice per year outside its base in Frankfurt, travelled to Naples, which is struggling economically.
It was expected to leave policy interest rates at its current record-low levels after Thursday's meeting.
Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco, a member of the ECB governing council, has said that the eurozone crisis was handled badly because the needs of the real economy were neglected.
In an interview published by Naples daily Il Mattino ahead of Thursday's meeting, Visco said that "we have had a serious crisis because of many mistakes and delays".
After the global economic crisis began, "we intervened in Greece with a debt-restructuring operation, instead of resolving the problems of the real economy," said Visco.
"The crux is that capital left Europe and this created the sovereign debt crises".
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